The Chanukha Toy Story: A New Spin on Dreidels!

Dear Rivy,

Please settle this argument between myself and my spouse. I say dreidels are a Jewish version of a typical child’s toy that we plunked Hebrew letters on, she claims that the dreidel is a uniquely Jewish toy.

Before settling this marital difference of opinion; first we must do a review of dreidelosity. The dreidel or sivivon is the toy that we amuse ourselves with over the holiday of Chanukah. The word dreidel is Yiddish, to drei, is to turn. Sometimes the dreidel is called sivivon in Hebrew, meaning “round and round.”

It is a spinning top with four sides. On each side a Hebrew letter appears, nun – gimmel – heh – shin – standing for the words nes gadol haya sham, miracle – great – was – there, meaning a great miracle happened there; referring to the Chanukah miracle.

It is essentially a gambling game with each player initially contributing to the pot and then experiencing wins or losses according to the twists and turns of the dreidel. Play begins when the dreidel is spun. Depending on the letter upon which it lands the player must contribute to the pot or alternatively may be awarded an amount from the pot; perhaps half the pot or if you are lucky the whole pot! A miracle!

Traditionally, if you land on the nun – you neither put in nor take out – if you land on the gimmel you are awarded with the entire pot. Landing on heh gets you half the pot and if your dreidel ends its dizzying twirling on the dreaded shin, you must submit and put in the predetermined amount. .

Now to your question; to quote the larger-than-life Jewish philosopher, Tevye, you are right and your spouse is also right. You are right in that, though we attribute the first playing of the dreidel back to the time of the Greek-Syrians and the Chanukah story, we also know that in Europe, there was a gambling game with a spinning top that had been played for centuries by various people. In fact, the game of totum or teetotum is a gambling game with a spinning top first mentioned in approximately 1500.

The connection to the Chanukah story has this spin to it; when we were prohibited from studying Torah we needed a way to hide our Torah learning. Using the dreidel as a decoy, we Jews would hide our books, take out the dreidels, and trick the Syrians into thinking that we were just playing a game.

Either way, I believe that in this unassuming whimsical dreidel there lies or shall I say spins, a number of significant Jewish ideas and even critical Chanukah lessons. Therefore, though the dreidel may very well be a universal kind of top, it is without a doubt imbued with a specifically Jewish message and meaning.

Know, that nothing of Jewish practice is arbitrary; neither the foods we eat nor the customs that we practice. There is a big word on that dreidel and I do not mean gadol, I mean nes, miracle. The notion of miracle and the approaches to the idea of miracles is a critical one in Jewish thought. To be sure, it is concept that is fraught with controversy especially in the context of the Chanukah story.

Consider these Chanukah texts. First, the prayer that we add to our daily service and to the grace after meals throughout the holiday called "Al Hanisim", for the miracles. In the prayer we find a description of the events of the days of the Hasmoneans. Of the battle that was fought in order to protect our right to worship freely and unencumbered by Greek influence. God delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few. The spectacularly sensational victory permitted the purification of the Temple and the rededication of its vessels. A miracle, but, look closer, something is missing here. The oil! Where in this prayer of wonders is mention of the miracle of the oil?

To locate the oil we must search in the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, where we find first mention of the famed cruse. The text asks the question, what is the reason for Chanukkah? The passage explains that when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and then defeated the enemy, they entered the Temple to rededicate its environs, they made search and found but one lone cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest. It contained a sufficient reserve for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought and they lit the lamp and it burned for eight days, allowing for time to produce more of the needed olive oil.

A bit of confusion from our sources; which miracle are we celebrating, is it the astounding triumph on the battlefield or the supernatural metaphysical miracle of oil that lasted for eight days?

I know the skeptical answer couched in historical realism and rationality, the "No, Virgina there was no long lasting oil"- response that many give. It does not work for me. I think of the oil's lasting for eight days as a sort of Divine Wake Up call, "Maccabees and all the rest of you, did you not notice what happened out there on the battlefield? - Yes you are good soldiers, but without Me, without the intervention of the Holy One, there would have been no victory, there would be no rededication of the temple and you would not have been poised to embark on your great long history.
It is never the might of the hand alone that brings the victory; it is the commitment to a higher good that ultimately affects triumph.

All of this is spinning before us in that dreidel. You pick up the dreidel, the seemingly quintessence of randomness, you spin it and as chance determines the fate of your pot the dreidel in turn teaches you the lesson of Chanukah - a great miracle happened there. No haphazardness in that Chanukah story, no arbitrary twist of history but rather a wondrous miracle reminding us that nothing about the fate of our people is by chance. David Ben Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel put it this way, "In Israel, in order to be a realist, you have to believe in miracles."

Quite the Festival of Lights

Quite the Festival of Lights, indeed. As the sun set on Friday, we in the Jewish community who had lost power were entering into what some might suggest would be more aptly called a Festival of Darkness. It became a four day long holiday of chilliness; candles being lit not only in windows, as tradition demands, but throughout our eerily darkened homes.

Much has been reported about our area’s dramatic human surrender to nature but I haven’t seen the Jewish-Chanukah angle anywhere. Maybe this is not surprising, what with our city still reeling under the Seatac airport Menorah fiasco.

As we attempted to observe what we like to think of as a minor festival, our holiday food production was stymied and our Sabbath meals almost thwarted. In place of the classic autumnal High Holiday soulful prayer, “who shall live and who shall die” the questions now were more like “who has a gas stove, who cooks with electric?” And then friends’ homes began to open. Everyone was suddenly sleeping and eating everywhere but home, and the warmth of friendship and hospitality replaced the more mundane variety that runs through wires.

But later as we walked home from synagogue Friday evening in the frightening heavy blackness, feeling our way tentatively along the tree limb strewn sidewalks, it didn’t quite feel like the days of miracles, but rather of abandonment and aloneness. Where is the light on this holiday? Cold and dark did not seem to fit with fond cherished memories of Chanukahs past.

There were some on that chilling walk home, brazen enough to point out the irony of trees and lights coming down, while candles in Menorahs burned steadily in the windows of homes that we were passing. Port Authority of Seattle? Perhaps this, the year that Jews were brutally gunned down and one even viciously murdered right in downtown Seattle, perhaps this year was not the best year to ban the placing of the Menorah in the airport. Perhaps, this was the year to acknowledge the Supreme Court decision that the Menorah, not unlike the Christmas Tree, for the purposes of public display, has been determined to be a secular symbol.

After all is said and done we will never know just exactly what went on behind closed doors at those meetings between rabbis and airport officials; but this we do know - that a graceful elegance was absent. Our community would surely have appreciated a nod in our direction. Instead, ugly images and quotes were spread by media. And that very slightly below the surface Mel Gibsonesque anti-Semitism reared its ugly head. Rabbis and Jewish organizations received repulsive hateful e-mails and we were again on alert; not the holiday spirit for anyone.

This is not an easy time of year. There are great expectations for nostalgic celebrations, tensions of tight timelines for holiday preparations; none of us found this storm to be particularly helpful in that regard. It did however teach each of us that light must emerge from inside, warmth comes from friends; that Menorah in the window shining brightly through the storm? It reminds us of a very idealistic struggle for religious freedom and there is nothing more American than that, Happy Chanukah.

Consider this idea -- Chanukah Ushpizin!

Ushpizin is the Aramaic word for guest. The custom of Ushpizn is practiced on each night of Succot. We invite guests in to our Succhah. Traditionally they are Biblical figures. We tell their story, we discuss their life and some of us even craft our menu around them; red lentil soup for Jacob, lamb for Isaac, you get the idea. What if we were to create Chanukah Ushpizin? Let us identify eight people from different moments in Jewish history that each embodies the ideals and heroism of Chanukah. Then we "invite" them into our homes.
After lighting the candles take a few minutes to announce the arrival of the evening’s guest. The guests appear in chronological order highlighting challenging times in our history.
In preparation you might do a little research of your own but if time is limited simply read the short paragraph below. Then encourage your family and friends to discuss the person and their story. In what way does their life inform our celebration of Chanukah?
If you are feeling particularly ritualistic like you might begin by an official declaration, otherwise simply launch a conversation around the evening’s personality.
Here is my list, feel free to create your own. Start with this opening declaration if you like and follow with a list of guests and a few short details about their life.
Welcome venerable guest! Welcome to our celebration of Chanukah. On this Night of Chanukah we celebrate your story of heroism and commitment our people and our beliefs.
First Night
Mattiyahu. How could we not start with this preeminent figure of the Chanukah story? Known in English as Matthias, he is father of the Maccabees. When Greek officers arrive in Modi'in with the intention of forcibly implementing the king's ordinances regarding sacrifices to idols, Mattityahu refuses. Together with his sons and other believers he launches the battle against the Greco-Syrians.
Second Night
Judith is one of our most courageous female heroines. The legend goes that she was coerced by the Greco-Syrians to spend the night with the foreign general before her own wedding. Once alone with the inebriated man she was able to cut off his head, present it to the Maccabbees who proceeded to win the battle against the leaderless army.
Third Night
Yochannan ben Zakkai is the first century sage who faced with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the virtual obliteration of his community succeeds in extricating a promise from Vespasian the conquering general to preserve and save the Torah scholars of Yavneh thereby guaranteeing the continuity of our people.
Fourth Night
Don Isaac Abravanel who lived in the 15th century in Spain was a great Torah scholar. Though he was a prominent member of the court of Ferdinand and Isabella he opted to be exiled together with the Jewish community in 1492. He heroically led them in the march out of Spain.
Fifth Night
Sara Bat Tovim lived in the 1700’s in the Ukraine which was still reeling from the Chmelnitzki uprisings. There she began to write prayers specifically for women with uniquely female themes. The prayers were in Yiddish and used by women. Her heroism is the heroism of a less dramatic nature, but deeply significant.
Sixth Night
In the 1920’s Sara Schenier living in Krakow Poland began to realize that young Jewish women were receiving no formal Jewish education. She heroically launched the Bais Yaacov movement still alive and well till today. She started with one school and one small group of young women. By the time World War II started there were over 20,000 women studying in her schools, most of her students perished in the Holocaust.
Seventh Night
We invite two young women, Ala Gertner was one, who on October 7, 1944, several hundred prisoners relegated to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after realizing that they were going to be killed that evening. During the revolt, they were able to blow up one of the gas chambers. The prisoners had used explosives smuggled into the camp by these two young Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were caught and publicly hanged.
Eighth Night
Natan Scharansky looms large in the minds of those of us who were alive during the refusnik period. After spending almost ten years in Soviet prisons for trumped up espionage charges he was released with great celebration. Afterwards, when he was asked about his ordeal andhow he had survived, he spoke about a book of David's Psalms, which his wife had given to him. In particular Psalm chapter 23 which said, "fear noevil" which would later become the title of his autobiography.
I hope this helps bring the Chanukah story alive. It is a story with reverberations throughout history and a tale that begins with the Maccabees but continues through the great people of all generations who display every day courage as well as spectacular acts and who are ready to lay their life on the line in more ways than one, for Judaism and the Jewish people.

Judith the Obscure

Sadly, the female experience has become invisible through the ages sometimes even when their role is remarkably critical. To see a significant and meaningful place for women in the Chanukah celebration, one needs to do a little digging -- but not too much. Let's look at the vast body of rich Jewish legal literature, sometimes it may reveal that which you least expect.
Let us begin by opening the Shulchan Aruch, Code of Jewish Law, authored by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the sixteenth century. In section 970 we find the first law concerning Chanukah. He starts with the simple; Chanukah is for eight days beginning on the 25th of Kislev. These are days when eulogies and fasting are prohibited, but work is permitted - except for women who have the custom to abstain from doing any form of labor while the candles are burning. Further on, he writes that women are obligated in lighting Chanukah candles and may light on behalf of the entire household.
Two interesting points jump out. First, though the laws of Chanukah go on for pages, it is women's custom that immediately takes center stage. The only labor prohibited on the festival is by women - during the burning of the Chanukah candles. The second significant halachic twist is that in spite of the principal that women are exempt from positive time bound commandments - when it comes to the lighting of the Chanukah candles their obligation is equal to that of men.
Questions; why do women have the custom to refrain from work while the Chanukah candles burn? Why do they seem to have a higher level of commitment or perhaps reverence for the Chanukah lights? And finally, why are they obligated in lighting Chanukah candles?
Now we will zoom back in time to search the pages of the Talmud for Rabbi Karo’s source. Opening to page 23a of Tractate Shabbat we find that “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says that women are obligated in the mitzvah of Chanukah lights, for they too were involved in the miracle." They too were involved in the miracle? Rabbi Shlomo Yischaki, Rashi, tenth century scholar, suggests two possible interpretations to the puzzling phrase. First, they too were involved in the miracle - they too were subjugated to the Greeks, but in a terribly tragic way particular to women only. Each Jewish virgin was forced to be with a Greek officer before marrying. Second possibility; it was through a woman that the miracle occurred. This provocative comment is echoed and enlarged upon by Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, Rashbam, he adds, that the Chanukah miracle was done through the hands of Yehudit, Judith.

Ah, Judith the Obscure! To uncover her mystery, we must do some pasting together of Apocrypha, midrash and poetry. The reconstruction of this episode may never be completely satisfying, but what does emerge is a tale of heroism and sacrifice. It is unclear whether it is Judith the widow who goes forth willingly or Judith the bride who is taken by force, but, once alone with the Greek general she feeds him wine and cheese. She waits for the soporific meal to take its effect, cuts off his head, places it in her basket and ever so nonchalantly she returns to the Judean camp. Officers, troops and soldiers of the Greek camp are left in leaderless disarray and a breach enabling the smaller Judean army to triumph. And thus the miracle was truly executed by a woman.

Now what do we see? Is this what we might call a usable past? I think so. The legend together with halachic practice has bequeathed to women a powerful symbol. Yes, we were victims; but we were also heroes. We are part of the miracle. We were oppressed, but we joined together with our brothers to fight back. Yehudit, Judith is enshrined forever in sculpture, art work, librettos, and novels. Her memory is recalled on the Shabbat of Chanukah when traditionally we recite a lengthy twelfth century piyyut, poem, describing the pathos of her wedding and youthful fears of what awaited her.

Let each and every woman light a Chanukah menorah, refrain from work, watch flames and remember. Let us see in those flames both the pain of our ancestors and the courage of their actions - both male and female alike.